The Writing Journey: How the Eclipse Changed My Writing Life

2017 will forever be remembered as the year I became a writer.

That likely sounds strange to you. After all, I’m a professional copywriter. I’ve been earning a living as a writer since 1998 when I started my freelance copy business. I began the transformation into owner of a copywriting and marketing company in 2004.

Not only that, but in 2014, I wrote my first Love-Based Copywriting book and by December, 2016, I had published the first four books in the Love-Based Business series.

I had also published the two novels I had written a decade earlier.

So, with all of that writing behind me, how could 2017 possibly be the year I became a writer?

Because it was the year I finally figured out how to balance all the writing I wanted to do each day without losing my mind.

This is the first post of my writing journey, and today, I thought I’d start by sharing a story about the August 2017 eclipse.

Before the eclipse, I was still struggling with the fiction side of my writing. Even though I had completed “It Began with a Lie,” (the first book in my psychological thriller/mystery trilogy due out Summer of 2018), and I had started the second book, “This Happened to Jessica,” I wasn’t enjoying writing fiction.

And that was really frustrating me.

I’m the type of writer who gets into what’s known as the “writing flow” pretty easily. (This is likely one of the reasons it was so easy for me to become a professional copywriter—once I finally get started, I typically slip into “flow” pretty quickly. Actually getting started, though, is a whole other can of worms. But I digress.)

While I can get into the flow easily no matter what I’m writing, the flow feels different when I write fiction. It’s more of a high, so to speak … being lost in a world of fiction.

And I was totally missing that with those novels.

Without that high, writing fiction turned into a chore—something to be pushed through rather than enjoyed. It was like slogging through mud, thick and depressing.

I hated it.

When I first got back into writing fiction, I was sure it was a temporary state. I assumed after a few months, something would click, and I’d be off to the races again.

Two and a half years later, nothing had changed.

I was seriously considering quitting fiction altogether.

But then the August eclipse happened.

I had been having super-intense dreams leading up to the day of the eclipse.

Disturbing dreams. Bordering on nightmares.

The day of the eclipse, I went outside. For a good hour I sat outside, watching the eclipse with my homemade paper viewer. A lizard eventually joined me, and I spent some time discussing my disturbing dreams with it. (Lizards are all about the dream world, in case you didn’t know. And, yes, I was talking out loud to the lizard and the lizard stuck around.)

After an hour, I went back in the house, pulled up my novel on my laptop, and started writing.

It was like a dam had broken. I wrote and wrote and wrote.

I was back in the flow. I was lost in the fiction world.

My high was back.

The best part? The shift stuck.

I was back to enjoying fiction again.

So, was it the power of the eclipse? Or was it just my perseverance? Would I have eventually broken through without a little astrological help?

I haven’t a clue.

Regardless, whatever happened that day, I’m extremely grateful. And because of what happened that day, I’m back on track for releasing my “Secrets of Redemption” series Summer of 2018.